Theory of alienation

Heat-busting initiative

Titlagarh, one of the hottest places in India, is undergoing a cool makeover. The sweltering summer that this small town of western Orissa experiences can be primarily attributed to its being surrounded by several rocky, barren hills which radiate heat throughout the day. Two of the hills are right inside the town.

"The ice"

It is the earth's final frontier. Antarctica, a gigantic mass of ocean-encased rocky islands south of the Antarctic Circle, is the earth's southern-most continent. There is no place colder or drier. Stark but majestic, uncompromisingly bleak but alluring, 98 per cent of the continent's 14 million kilometres (km) is sheathed in ice that is about 2,200 metres (m) thick on an average. The South Pole lies near its centre.

One hot day in June

On a hot June day in 1981 S Z Qasim, then environment secretary, reached out to answer a telephone. The caller was Indira Gandhi, the prime minister. The conversation was brief and to the point. "Can India reach Antarctica?" asked the prime minister. Qasim, who had only an academic knowledge of the continent in question, replied in the affirmative.

More like a ritual

A 1996 expert group report on the Indian Antarctic programme says: "The programme has so far been working in complete isolation with no substantial element of international cooperation.

Geopolitics

Is India's Antarctica science really an eye-wash -- more bureaucracy than science? One cannot, of course, deny the fact that India needs to keep that toehold.

Hidden cirrus clouds make the earth warmer

clouds and water vapour, hidden until now from most atmospheric sensors, are influencing global climate. They were recently detected by Junhong Wang and his colleagues from the us-based National Centre for Atmospheric Research (ncar). The clouds have little affect on daily weather forecasts. But they tend to warm the planet, by allowing sunlight to enter the atmosphere while trapping the radiation emitted from the ground.

Severe fog: Met department in dark

the weather gods seem hell-bent on proving the India Meteorology Department (imd) wrong. Barely had it recovered from the embarrassment of forecasting the monsoon incorrectly when the winter wrong-footed it.

The malefactor

poor people invariably bear the burden of development. A recent study is another testimony to this fact. It indicates global warming has led to more malaria in East Africa -- in any case, one of the world's worst hit regions.

Offshoots

recently, us researchers have proved for the first time that the water vapour exhaust trails or contrails that are left by cruising jet planes have an insulating effect on daily temperatures.